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Medieval Britain: A Very Short Introduction (A Review)

Another day, another Very Short
Introduction (hereafter VSI). This time I have turned my eye toward the Medieval Britain VSI, as written by John
Gillingham and Ralph A. Griffiths.

Much
like the numerous other VSIs I have read and reviewed, Medieval Britain performs it primary function—the dissemination of
basic facts and knowledge about Britain in the Middle Ages—admirably: the
Hundred Years War, the Black Death, and the various factions jockeying for the
royal throne, especially during that ever important conflict known as The War
of the Roses, are all considered in some passing details with additional
information concerning the economics and daily life in this fascinating period of
British history serving as an informational fulcrum. Honestly, I am not really
sure of what else I can say, what should be said that I haven’t said before?
Well, one thing…

What
I noticed with this VSI, perhaps due to its original publication history taking
place during the Cold War, is a marked increase in apparently anachronistic
superimpositions. What I mean by this is that there is many aspects of this VSI
that sound… ‘Off,’ when you muse on the passage for some time.

I
will be curt and to the point: there is a lot of conservative pandering in this
installment. Numerous passages have this tendency to speak of the medieval
economy, wages, class struggle, and inequality between the sexes as though the
laws which governed those periods are the same as today; when the text speaks
of how female bear-trappers earned more than their male counterparts,
emphasizing the point with an exclamation point, or of how the text focuses in
on market laws and logic, as if Ayn Rand’s philosophy concerning the Free Market
was inviolable throughout history—something you can glean in any period without
fail, the text operates less as an introduction and more as a piece of
historical revisionism.

To
be clear, I am not implying that the information contained in the introduction
is wrong, per se, just that it is presented through what is, at the least, an
odd compositional style, and at the most, a reactionary ideological lens. Many
snippets of information tend to be presented as though they are in dialog with
modernity: while it is obvious that the past is always in dialog with
modernity, since history is sediment, the text appears to have ahistorical Libertarian
leanings when it comes to how such historical minutia is shown. For a history
text, this is odd; but it is done, in my belief, because during the time of the
original version’s publication—The Oxford
Illustrated History of Britain (1984)—of course the Cold War and
progressive-liberal struggle against communism would taint scholasticism. Even
though it is not overwhelming in its persuasiveness, one can clearly detect the
bias voice of the counter-revolutionary. Though, perhaps I am reading too much
into what is a mere stylistic difference.

In
the end, the Medieval Britain VSI is
another fine and brief piece for any newcomer to consume. Since it is part of a
larger textual corpus which was disambiguated from the original illustrated
mother text, I would recommend reading this installment after the previous
installments, but it is possible to read this one separate from the preceding
installments without losing a great deal of comprehension. As it stands, the Medieval Britain VSI stands as a fine
introductory primer to any Undergraduate library.

Medieval
Britain: A Very Short Introduction

John
Gillingham & Ralph A. Griffiths

177
pages. Published by Oxford University Press. $11.95 (Paperback). 2000.

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Lately, I was browsing around online and found another handy resource for aspiring medievalists.

Enter, Western Michigan University's Medieval Institute!

The site has links to an extensive book shop, scholarly journals, as well as a free download. See below for links.

General listing: http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/medievalpress/
Index of titles available for purchase: http://www.wmich.edu/medievalpublications/all-titles
The 'Medieval Globe' book(s): http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/medieval_globe/ (Click on title(s) for free download)

Okay, that is all for now. Sometime soon I think that I would like to organize all of my resource links so that I, as well as you, have a concrete listing of reliable resources. Until then, we shall have to make due.